UPCOMING EVENTS

Bluehole Studio has updated its last-person-standing shooter PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds 14 times since launching it in late March, but the developer is now planning to slow down that cadence. In a blog post today, the Battlegrounds development team explained that its schedule of updating the game on a weekly basis with major updates going live every month are causing more problems than they are fixing. In response, Bluehole plans to give every patch more time so that it can release more substantial and polished features to its megapopular online combat sim.

Battlegrounds is still in Steam’s Early Access portal for unfinished games, so a slower pace for updates may frighten some fans who have purchased into the game for $30 before it has reached its full retail release. Many diehard players who have hundreds of hours (and I’m not talking about myself here) are waiting for the vaulting update. That patch, which adds the ability to climb onto and over obstacles, never had release timeline, but Bluehole confirmed that it is “still on-track to release our game as per our updated timeline.” And the studio’s promising that just because it is doing fewer patches doesn’t mean it will produce less content. Expect beefier patches in the future.

“Today we are changing our patch and update schedule to improve how we work on the game, as well as set realistic expectations for players,” reads the blog post. “Until the official release of the game, we will not have our scheduled weekly or monthly patches rolling out as often as before. We’ve found internally that being rushed to finish certain features, and having shorter QA test time between pushing updates, caused more issues than it solved in regards to maintaining a high standard of quality. We want to put our best content out and ensure that everything we do is making the game more enjoyable with every update.”

Battlegrounds players will still find new features and ideas on the test server, and Bluehole wants to give those beta concepts a longer time in this phase. So while you may not get a substantial weekly update, you can likely always see what is in the works.

“Again, we would like to assure you all that we are still on track to release our game as per our updated timeline,” reads the blog. “And we want to emphasize to you that we are not winding down the development [or growing] complacent. We have a lot of work to do, and we want this game to be released with as many fun, rich, enjoyable features and mechanics as possible.”